Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Politico says Goodlatte's Innovation Act is dead in the water

From Politico:

The House’s patent reform bill appears dead in the water for now, partly due to biopharma’s demand for a carveout from the inter partes review process that Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte rejected. Meanwhile, efforts to address the biotech industry’s concerns in the Senate’s companion PATENT Act drew the spotlight last week, when the Congressional Budget Office estimated an IPR exemption would cost $1.3 billion over a decade because of delayed competition from generic drugs. Pharma hopes to push a bill through the Senate and that the House will eventually come around. However, that’s unlikely to happen this fall, with a jam-packed congressional calendar and so many other players with their own sets of concerns on these bills.

Recall back in June 2015 the Washington Post ran a story which included:

"Chairman Goodlatte is continuing to work with all stakeholders and Members of the Committee to address concerns," a committee aide said in a statement. "Chairman Goodlatte has tasked specific Members of the Judiciary Committee to work directly with stakeholders on ways to make improvements."

Update: A bipartisan group of lawmakers have pulled together a late amendment to the venue revisions that aims to address the biggest immediate concern of the bill's proponents. Led by Republicans Blake Farenthold (Texas) and Darrell Issa (Calif.), and Democrat Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), the amendment could be the fix that holds the bill's coalition together.

"Let's just say this whole process could've unraveled" without it, said a House aide. "It was closer than I think most people realize."

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About Me

I'm a patent lawyer located in central New Jersey. I have a J.D. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where I studied graphite intercalation compounds at the Center for Materials Research. I worked at Exxon Corporate Research in areas ranging from engine deposits through coal and petroleum to fullerenes. An article that I wrote in The Trademark Reporter, 1994, 84, 379-407 on color trademarks was cited by Supreme Court in Qualitex v. Jacobson, 514 US 159 (1995) and the methodology was adopted
in the Capri case in N.D. Ill. An article that I wrote on DNA profiling was cited by the Colorado Supreme Court (Shreck case) and a Florida appellate court (Brim case). I was interviewed by NHK-TV about the Jan-Hendrik Schon affair. I am developing ipABC, an entity that combines rigorous IP analytics with study of business models, to optimize utilization of intellectual property. I can be reached at C8AsF5 at yahoo.com.